NYSE, Nasdaq Cancel Some Trades at Height of Thursday's Volatility

The New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq OMX Group say they will cancel trades involving stocks that saw sharp volatility at the height of the market’s steep intraday decline Thursday afternoon.

The NYSE Arca unit of NYSE Euronext (NYX: 29.26, -0.59, -1.98%) and Nasdaq, as well as other markets, planned to cancel all trades executed at prices that were greater than or less than 60% away from the last printed price prior to 2:40 p.m. Eastern time, up to 3 p.m.

The cancelled trades could change how the major indexes actually closed. For instance, there was a questionable trade in Procter & Gamble (PG: 60.33, -0.43, -0.71%) that many in the market blamed for accelerating the selloff, which, at its nadir, saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average off 998 points. It eventually closed down 347.80 points to close as 10520.32. There were also market rumors that a trader made an erroneous sell order for billions of shares of the e-mini futures traded at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. CME Group (CME: 315.19, -6.2, -1.93%) said in a statement that its markets functioned properly and without issue.